Musical Fidelity - V-CAN MKII - Headphone Amplifier

Mink

Headphoneus Supremus
Pros: Fluid and natural tonality, layered (3D) soundstage
Cons: 3D soundstage depth comes at expense of soundstage width and clarity in the high fequencies
I find it difficult to get used to the sound of this little amp.
In comparison with the amp I used for years, the headphones-out my old faithfull Marantz PM7200 the sound is superior in many ways.
There's more depth, a cleaner, more fluid tonality, better layering of instruments and finally no more humming/buzzing of the transformer, the main reason I got this amp.
But the sound isn't as wide. With some recordings my ears miss something, especially my left ear craves for more sound, it wants the music to fill out the left channel and beyond.
This makes for a hard listening at times, but to be honest, objectively the difference in width is really small, I am just so grown with the sound of my old amp, it is just like an old habit I need to get rid of.
Or maybe not? Time will tell.
I give this little V-Can some time to grow on me, because it has lots of good things going for it.
I'll update this review over a couple of weeks.
 
Update:
I will return the little amp. There's a clear channel imbalance. I tested this with my Marantz amp, when turning the balance control knob slightly to the right it gave me the same sensation I got with the V-Can, my left ear begging for a little more sound. It's a pity because the overall sound is really excellent.
 
So this review is no longer valid, because it is not fair to rate a faulty unit. Therefore I ask the moderator to delete this review in time.

JamesHuntington

100+ Head-Fier
Pros: Cheap, clean sound, basic design/user friendly
Cons: LOUDER THANYOU WILL EVER NEED
I don't know what kind of headphones they designed these for, but for my 300ohm Sennheiser HD-540 and AKG k701 I only turn up about 25%. If you wanted to use a splitter this should be able to power 3-4 pairs of nice headphones, which would be good if you wanted the band to hear during production and recording; however, I have not tested it for use of monitoring with many headphones.That said, they are nice and I can keep them low enough that I don't blow my ears out. I think it looks and feels very high quality and professional, as you'd expect from Musical Fidelity. I don't think it would be great for playing different albums off your mp3 type players in shuffle, as you might be changing the volume control very often with differently mixed albums. To play a single player or your special CD from Japan that you payed $80- for, it is very good and you will never have to worry about it not being loud enough, ever. For me, it's not hard to find the sweet spot of perfect volume when I'm listening to my SACD collection with the V-can hooked up to a Denon SACD player. This is an instant improvement from going out of almost of any stock stereo device with their stock headphone jack. You hear what you want without cranking up your stereo receiver, how nice is that? Maybe if I had weaker headphones I wouldn't need this, but I have 3 pairs that starve with in my receiver. I turn the volume on my stereo to 75% for average listening on headphones and I could handle 100% on some albums. So, if you've been through the stereo and want to go big, this is good clean sound for a great price. As far as I can see, this thing will grow with me, because as I go deaf from it, I will only need to turn it up a little to hear again (joke.) Note: since it is so loud, I tried hooking it straight up to a record player without a phono pre-amp. But it didn't get loud enough for what I like even all the way up.
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aharitt
aharitt
I am using V-CAN, which is a previous version of V-CAN II.  The issue with the loudness, using attenuators would help.  I use Rockwell attenuators between my DAC and V-CAN.  They reduced 10 dBs, along with any hums.  Usually the volume of V-CAN is between 9 and 12. 
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